Not what it seems – new wildlife spotted on the banks of the Kennet and Avon Canal near Marlborough in Wiltshire<\/p>\n
Walkers and boaters on a canal have been surprised by a rather unexpected addition to the waterways.<\/p>\n
A large gorilla statue has appeared on an old ash tree stump next to Bruce Mason’s boat mooring at Great Bedwyn, on the Kennet and Avon Canal in Wiltshire.<\/p>\n
The statue was bought for him as a 60th birthday present by his friends and its name – Gerald – was chosen after a charity event.<\/p>\n
“I just had the idea that a gorilla at the top of the stump would look great,” said Mr Mason. “I don’t know where the idea came from. I just thought a gorilla would look fantastic.”<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, about six months ago, the tree had to be cut down because it had ash dieback, and we missed it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We just thought it would be a shame just to leave that stump there, bare like that.”<\/p>\n
After he received the statue as a birthday present, Mr Mason’s thoughts turned to raising money for charity.<\/p>\n
“There’s an organisation called the Bruce Trust, which runs canal boats for the disabled,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We thought a good way of raising some money for them would be to have a gorilla naming ceremony at the Three Tuns in Great Bedwyn.<\/p>\n
“Everybody put some money in a pot, and we drew out some names, and then we had cheers for the winner.”<\/p>\n
Gerald proved the most popular name following the event – which raised \u00a3220 for the Bruce Trust. <\/p>\n
The name honours a scene from the Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch, which stars Rowan Atkinson.<\/p>\n
Mr Mason added: “I love the fact he’s just keeping guard. His expression almost changes due to the light of the day.<\/p>\n
“Everybody who walks past the boat is laughing and smiling. Looking up and seeing a gorilla in the middle of Great Bedwyn on the the Kennet and Avon is not the sort of thing you’d expect.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not what it seems – new wildlife spotted on the banks of the Kennet and Avon Canal near…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-214424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}